While the markets opened on a sour note, they slowly gained momentum all day to top off the best weekly gain of 2012.
Despite yesterday's disappointment that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wouldn't commit to further monetary action, today's reports that Spain will seek relief for its beleaguered banking sector helped. If the eurozone allows its estimated $50 billion request of funds from the European Financial Stability Facility, it would go a long way toward shoring up the nation's asset bases. It's not an outright solution, but at least it should kick the can down the road for a while, buying time for further recovery to help grow Spain out of its problems. Unsurprisingly, Banco Santander
That said, let's see where the three major indexes closed and take a closer look at today's best-performing sector (hint: it was health care).
Index |
Gain / Loss |
Gain / Loss % |
Ending Value |
---|---|---|---|
Dow Jones Industrial Average |
93.24 | 0.75% | 12,554.20 |
Nasdaq | 27.40 | 0.97% | 2,858.42 |
S&P 500 | 10.67 | 0.81% | 1,325.66 |
Source: Yahoo! Finance.
It was fitting the Nasdaq had the best performance, up nearly 1%, as it closed out the week with an impressive 4% gain. The S&P 500 saw a 3.7% weekly increase while the Dow finished up a mere 3.6%. If only it lagged like that every week! All those gains have calmed investor worries as the market's fear gauge, the VIX
As I mentioned, health care has quietly been the best-performing sector of the market over the past six months, and it added to that lead with a 1.3% gain on the day. Notable risers included Pharmacyclics
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